Some known computing devices may include various hardware and software elements that may enable performance of a variety of tasks in response to user input. Conventionally, a user may interact with or otherwise activate the hardware and software elements through one or more interfaces (such as a keyboard, a mouse, a touch screen, etc.) by selecting one or more pre-configured graphical and/or hardware buttons (such as an icon, a switch, etc.).
For example, a user may use an Internet-enabled mobile device that browses the World Wide Web. The user may manually enter a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for a desired webpage using a virtual keyboard or similar input device of the mobile device. The process of entering the URL may be complicated by the size or configuration of the input device. More specifically, the utility of virtual keyboards and other input devices designed for use with a mobile device (e.g., a smartphone) is often limited by the relatively small physical dimensions of the mobile device itself, negatively impacting the user experience.
One conventional solution is to implement gesture-based shortcuts that may be used to control a mobile device. A gesture (such as a pattern traced by a fingertip on a touch screen or other presence-sensitive device) may be detected by a mobile device. The detected gesture may be identified by the device and matched to one or more predefined shortcuts corresponding to one or more actions and/or operations performed by the device. In some instances, a computing device may graphically present to the user a list of the shortcuts associated with the detected gesture for selection by the user. Based at least in part on a received user selection, the computing device may then perform the one or more actions/operations corresponding to the selected shortcut (e.g., open a web browser application and connect to a specific location, execute a program, etc.).
In some instances, however, a user may not be willing to spend much effort to associate the gestures and shortcuts necessary to define a custom, user-specific gesture-based language. Further, the more gestures and shortcuts exist, the less likely it may be that the user will be able to recall the various custom-defined gestures and associated shortcuts. In other words, user-defined gesture-based languages may not scale. As the user-defined gesture-based language develops, the number of gesture and shortcut associations may reach the thousands, hundreds of thousands, or more such that the user may not be able to recall the various gestures and associated shortcuts of the gesture-based language. When a user is unable to recall the various gesture and associated shortcuts, the user may not use or otherwise abandon the gesture-based language and, instead, rely upon the keyboard for manual input.